


Beloved

by nerfherderhan



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Bad Touch Chancellor Ardyn Izunia, M/M, Unreliable Narrator, i legitimately don't know what to tag so let me know if there's anything i missed, just for Ardyn's part
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 08:47:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14040540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerfherderhan/pseuds/nerfherderhan
Summary: A tiny flicker of warmth in the otherwise eternal chill of the lab. He presses his hand to the glass of the tube, despair in the pit of his stomach. He wishes he’d seen this coming. He wishes he’d known his beloved, so tainted by Lucis and the hatred Ardyn harbours for the country, would come back to him in the form of something inhuman.The assistant lingers behind him as he whispers apologies to the infant.





	Beloved

**Author's Note:**

> great big shout out to shiftseveny for feedback during and after writing and helping a TON with the latin names

His beloved had been the first he relieved of the Starscourge.

Ardyn isn’t sure why his first instinct had been to seek out Carus, nor why he’d refused to heal anyone until his beloved was healthy again. Somnus had teased him, calling it a love so strong that Ardyn, in his moment of initial power, had forsaken the rest of the world for a single soul. He didn’t agree or disagree, too elated at the time to see the Starscourge fade from pale skin tucked beneath his arms.

Carus would never leave his side. Carus would tell him, “I’ll be here for you, just a you were for me.” Carus would bring Ardyn warmth where the Starscourge would freeze.

Carus was his beloved, from the moment they met to the moment the gods themselves would part them.

He wishes it had never come to this, that the gods hadn’t rejected him for simply doing as he’d been told. He’d helped so many, took on their sickness so that they may prosper. Was that not what a king was meant for? To allow his people to flourish at the cost of his own life? Ardyn kneels, hardly paying his younger brother much mind -- he always was good at focusing on one thing at a time, he thinks sourly. Carus is wrapped in his arms again, just like when he’d taken the Scourge, but the scene is abysmally wrong.

Carus never left his side. Carus never left his side when Somnus declared, “Ardyn Lucis Caelum, you are no longer fit to be called human.” Carus never stopped bringing him warmth as blood slickened his hands and stained his beloved’s robes.

The Scourge housed within Ardyn leaves him in a frenzy. A frenzy he never has a chance to unleash upon his brother for slaying his beloved.

At least his beloved is the last thing he sees before the accursed sword strikes.

* * *

The indescribable warmth pulls him off the path. Ardyn knows the warmth from somewhere, the way it melts the Scourge from his core. Were he not reduced to a shadow of his former self, a monster sustained only by the daemonic energy within him, he’d swear his heart is beating again.

It pulses from the farmhouse atop the hill, beckoning him closer with promises of a light he doubts will ever exist in this world again. But his boots crunch down on dry grass and his gaze never leaves the farmhouse. He climbs uphill. He studies the paint chipping away from the steps of the porch. The warmth doesn’t go away.

Ardyn waits. He waits and waits. He doesn’t know what he’s longing for as he remains at the porch step, but the longing is there all the same.

“Hello!”

Ardyn looks up, curious, and sees a head peeking over the veranda at him. Someone is on the roof of this farmhouse, hammer in hand and sweat beading at the brow. The light of the sun behind them leaves Ardyn staggering for shade, momentarily blinded by the sworn enemy of what lies at his core.

The warmth grows. The stranger climbs down haphazardly. The warmth almost burns him.

“Didn’t see you come over,” the stranger -- a young woman, eyes an indigo so much like Carus’ -- laughs. “Lookin’ for a place to stay before the sun sets?”

He’s dumbfounded. He’s at a loss for words. He never thought he’d feel this warmth again, feel so alive. For a moment Ardyn forgets the Scourge in his body, the loss of Carus, and he just smiles.

“That would be lovely.”

 

Tenera becomes his new Carus. What had started as Ardyn dropping by every week, complimenting her work on the farmhouse, has now moved on to something so much more familiar. A shared bed, smiles exchanged over coffee, hands laced together as the sun rises. Carus had promised to keep him grounded as he healed his people -- as far as he knows, Carus has done just that, blessing him with Tenera.

 

The warmth leaves him abruptly one evening. Ardyn is reading one of Tenera’s books, intrigued by her tastes in literature and the particular points in history she wants to learn about. He can feel the sun against his skin, leaking through the window and telling him the sweetest of secrets -- and then the sun snaps away, the icy claws of the Scourge numbing him once more.

It takes him some time to find Tenera to begin with. She’d been secretive this morning, telling him about a surprise she had planned. Ardyn sprints and sprints, no longer able to feel the burn of his lungs demanding air. Does he even need air anymore? He can’t remember. Tenera’s driven away the cold so well, brought him the freedom Carus had after so long, that Ardyn had almost forgotten what it meant to be dead.

When he finds her, she’s holding a bouquet of red salvias. Rigid fingers keep them from being lost to the breeze gently nudging at them. What once must have been a brilliant, vibrant red within her now pools around her, a disgusting, clotted black that leaves Ardyn emptier than he’d been twenty years before.

He takes the salvias and carries her back to the farmhouse. The sabertusks that hover around them, wanting their kill back, are slaughtered without so much as an effort on Ardyn’s part. They consume each other, giving up on Tenera and Ardyn. It makes the silence all the more unbearable.

* * *

“Well aren’t you a curious one?”

The little blond looks him up and down with wide eyes. “Mama says I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

Ardyn can’t fault him with that response. “Your mother should’ve told you it’s dangerous to walk up to them, as well,” he sings. The blond squeaks, dropping his toy truck to the ground in his shock. “But luckily for you, I’m not so detestable that I would harm a child.”

It takes everything in him to ignore the warmth the child radiates. It’s coincidence, he tells himself. He’s projecting his losses, his needs, onto someone else’s loved one.

“Run along to your mother,” he tells the blond. He picks up the truck and hands it back to him, careful to avoid any contact. The warmth isn’t real. He won’t be proven wrong. “And do try to follow her advice better.”

* * *

The artist has a keen eye. He leans back on his heels as he rakes his gaze over the painting. Short, careful strokes; muted colours bringing beauty to the gloom; the lone blue salvia fading into the field.

O. Lacrima is talented. Talented in a way that Ardyn hasn’t seen in decades. It’s a crime that so few people in the gallery linger near the piece, turning their noses up and crowding around the abstract pieces down the hall. Ardyn is the only one appreciating it. It seems like he’s the only one to appreciate the finer things in life.

The curator comes to a stop beside him. He’s a balding man, the kind of aristocrat Ardyn has grown to detest over the years. Always so proud, always so expectant. They all want the world on a silver platter without a care for the consequences. At least Ardyn’s bitterness has reason to it -- this man probably only thinks he’s owed the world because of his circumstance of birth.

“I apologise for the painting, sir,” the curator starts. Ardyn hums once. There’s nothing to apologise for, other than the tragic underappreciation the painting is suffering. “Had I known the artist would paint something so drab, I would’ve picked another piece to hang.”

Ardyn fixes his coat and shakes his head. “I find there’s a certain beauty to sorrow,” he says lightly. “Not many visual emotions can evoke melancholy so succinctly. The artist needed not words to accomplish as such, but a lone salvia in a field. Do you know what they symbolise?”

“I do not, sir.”

“A blue salvia means to think of one dear to you. The artist has portrayed a longing for someone special, a remembrance consumed by loneliness.”

As the curator scans the painting, trying to find the meaning Ardyn has all but pointed out for him, Ardyn adds, “I would like the purchase this piece. Personally from the artist.”

 

He tests it once O. Lacrima is face to face with him. How can he not, when the warmth haunts him every time the lanky artist scuttles in and out of doors trying to organise himself? Ardyn watches with amusement, watches with thoughts distantly recalling Tenera’s insistence to rebuild the house, and smiles to himself.

When the artist passes him by again, Ardyn whispers softly, “ _Carus_.”

Mr. Lacrima drops his box of hastily gathered oil paints, gasping as quietly as possible. It’s like a shock has gone through his entire body, and that warmth just _rolls_ off of him. It hits Ardyn with a force he’s never felt before -- not even the daemons he’d encountered or his own death had hit him so relentlessly -- and then he’s staring down at wide, indigo eyes.

Cleaning his house is forgotten. Mr. Lacrima watches Ardyn, hope in his gaze as he stands frozen on the spot. He’s begging Ardyn to have not misspoken, to repeat what he just said. Ardyn doesn’t want to disappoint. He saunters over, languid and lazy as ever, and comes to a silent halt a mere foot away from Mr. Lacrima.

He’s met with a shaky inhale before he even says anything.

“Carus,” Ardyn says again, and then tears are spilling over onto Mr. Lacrima’s cheeks. Arms grasp at his coat, a face buried into the crook of his neck; Mr. Lacrima hiccups and howls, doing his best to muffle the cries as Ardyn returns his embrace.

The way the artist babbles about the _dreams_ , how he knew they meant something, brings a hope to Ardyn’s heart he never imagined feeling again. He’d denied so much over the decades, ignoring what could’ve been his one reprieve from his curse, and now he knows. He _knows_. Tenera, the young boy he’d met, and now Orior Lacrima -- they’re all Carus, searching for Ardyn without even being aware of it.

He has his beloved back in his arms, feeding him warmth and standing once more by his side.

* * *

It becomes like a game of hide and seek. His beloved will hide for a decade or two, leaving Ardyn to wander and see his plans against Lucis develop, and then they live out the remainder of their life in peace. Orior passes peacefully of old age, held in Ardyn’s arms with a serene expression on his face. Ardyn wanders and wanders. Salvus is born, bringing warmth to the world again, and Ardyn follows.

He learns that the dreams are not common. That Orior, so introspective and patient, had taken the time to coax the dreams out from the recesses of Carus’s memories. Ardyn worries for a time, as he watches Salvus organise her brother’s wedding, that each rebirth will eventually overwrite and erase what remains of Carus. That he will lose his beloved so soon after noticing the pattern.

But Salvus reassures him. She makes it her duty to stay by his side at the celebration, noting his seclusion and offering to remain by his side. It warms his heart. It drives away the chill. It makes him forget his worries for another twenty years.

 

“You never change,” Salvus laughs at him one morning. She’s commenting on his insistence that he spoil her, but the remark makes him draw back from the warmth regardless.

She’s right. Though Orior had never said it, had never pointed it out in his dying moments, Ardyn lives on without his beloved. He never changes. He never lets go.

“I’d never want to,” Ardyn tells her softly in return.

* * *

The first lifetime Ardyn goes without warmth is the worst. His brother is long dead, his descendants slowly forgetting about his existence and leaving him the element of surprise once more. But he finds himself uncaring as he scours Eos over and over, save for the Crown City, in search of his beloved.

The warmth leaves the world after a mere ten years. Ardyn screams and shouts and curses. His beloved barely reached adolescence. His beloved was still a _child_. Who dared to take such a beautiful life away from them so suddenly?

He reads a story in the paper about a young child who’d been born with the Scourge. He weeps over how powerless he is.

* * *

Maybe he’s tainting his beloved’s life, he reasons. Maybe the child had the Scourge because Ardyn had polluted the soul. Maybe things will get better if he focuses on his plan against Lucis.

Maybe.

* * *

He meets the Oracle for the first time in a thousand years. Tenebraean royalty, dressed in white and donning a sylleblossom crown. Ardyn watches her warily, watches her smile. He doesn’t even let his guard down when she drops her own.

“Lost?” she asks. It’s not a question of knowing where he is. No, the Oracle is much too aware for that.

“‘Wandering’ is a term I favour,” Ardyn replies smoothly.

“Do you wander with purpose?”

He smiles down at her. He knows the uncanny way she sees through his facade -- the near sixth sense he himself once used when he healed his people -- and for all of a moment he entertains the idea of letting his human guise slip. Of letting her see the monster beneath and testing the limits of her compassion.

But he doesn’t.

“As much purpose as a wanderer may be capable of.”

The Oracle smiles back at him, amused by his answer. She returns to her guards’ sides, bidding him a good day. Ardyn ponders the interaction for days. Wonders what she could have possibly wanted.

He feels the warmth leave the world the day she dies, assassinated by a Niflheim spy. He hadn’t even noticed it return in the first place.

* * *

Ardyn decides he wants to take revenge on Lucis in the grandest way possible: Seeing the prophecy through and battling the King of Kings, proving to the gods and fate that nothing will stand in the way of his justice against Lucis. Nothing will stop Ardyn from punishing his brother, his brother’s children, for taking Carus from him.

Maybe then, once the world is engulfed in darkness and the daemons run rampant, he and Carus will be inseparable once more.

* * *

Carus rejects him the next time they meet.

Now a young man named Arcis, he hardly recognises Ardyn the way his past lives used to. The warmth is there -- he feels it himself, feels the daemons whimper and whine within -- but Arcis doesn’t even react.

Ardyn offers him salvias anonymously. Arcis burns them in his yard when no one is home.

Ardyn happens to run into him on occasion. Arcis sneers and scuttles away with his friends.

Ardyn visits him under the guise of a dream. Arcis picks up his brother’s rifle and screams that he’s not afraid of a little nightmare.

Ardyn lets his longing simmer. Arcis moves on with his life and starts a family of his own.

He’s done something wrong, but he doesn’t know what. Why is Carus so mad at him? Why won’t Carus just acknowledge the warmth and let him in? Ardyn tugs at his coat as he watches Arcis kiss his wife goodbye and climb into the truck. It’s heading for Insomnia, delivering all manner of things that the people seem fond of consuming.

Warping after the truck is easy. Following it inside is not. Warping to and from Insomnia, intent on following Arcis whenever he can, becomes the norm for the next fifty years.

* * *

Distance has not made the heart fonder. Distance has made his Carus bitter, for it is not Ardyn that taints his beloved’s soul. It is Lucis; its bloodied, crystalline claws sinking deeper and deeper into Carus’ core. The Oracle he’d seen was a chance -- a chance Ardyn, like a fool, had tossed aside out of spite for the gods.

He doesn’t even get the name of the Crownsguard his beloved has become. The man simply spots Ardyn, wary, and sprints for the nearest haven. Ardyn lingers. With each hour he and the Crownsguard stare each other down, Ardyn refusing to go near the glowing sigils engraved in the stone, it becomes more and more apparent to the Lucian just what Ardyn may be.

“I’ll make it right for us,” Ardyn says to the Crownsguard as dawn breaks. The Crownsguard swallows a lump in his throat, hand hovering shakily over the knife strapped to his thigh. “You deserve the world, Carus.”

Lucis will not corrupt his beloved any longer.

* * *

Niflheim is easy to force himself into. Iedolas Aldercapt laps up the secrets Ardyn feeds him, thirsts for the knowledge of daemons the Accursed has gathered in his never ending lifetime; it is no surprise that, once his information proves fruitful to Niflheim’s endeavours, Ardyn becomes Chancellor.

He won’t look for Carus while he’s in Niflheim, he decides. Any decade now the Chosen King will be born, and Ardyn would need to set aside even his beloved to eliminate that particular problem. Through his inspections and wanderings he finds promising individuals for his goal. Verstael Besithia shines above the rest.

The Magitek infantry is coming along well as the years go by. Ardyn paces the halls, observing the clones that have been growing, that continue to grow, that have yet to grow. Will Carus be proud, he asks himself, that his revenge against Lucis -- against Somnus and the gods -- will finally bear fruit? Or will Carus, no longer remembering Ardyn as fondly as Tenera and Orior had, regard him with horror?

Ardyn doesn’t care what he elicits from Carus. All he cares about is just how much of the world he’ll need to raze for his beloved’s sake.

He laughs bitterly as he passes another tank. He reads the barcode idly on the clone’s wrist, the only thing out of place on the otherwise normal-looking toddler. (How far technology has come, he muses.) Somnus was probably right, now that he thinks about it. Maybe he truly is forsaking the rest of the world for one soul -- but like the first time the words left his brother’s mouth, Ardyn can neither deny nor agree with the sentiment.

He can’t agree out of spite. Somnus will not take victory in being right about that.

He can’t deny it out of shame. Deep down he knows, for the past two millennia, that his plan had been for the sake of himself and Carus all along.

One of Verstael’s assistants passes him. He’s carting more clones -- embryos, rather, Ardyn notes with a dry look. They’re going to the latest sector built onto this particular facility, most likely undergoing the tests Ardyn had proposed and brainstormed with Verstael. They may be more machine, more daemon, than they are human, but Ardyn will be damned if he doesn’t admit they evolve quicker than humanity has in the last century. If his plans aren’t derailed by anything or anyone, Ardyn will be reunited with Carus without concern over for Lucis pulling them apart again.

 

A tiny flicker of warmth in the otherwise eternal chill of the lab. He presses his hand to the glass of the tube, despair in the pit of his stomach. He wishes he’d seen this coming. He wishes he’d known his beloved, so tainted by Lucis and the hatred Ardyn harbours for the country, would come back to him in the form of something inhuman.

The assistant lingers behind him as he whispers apologies to the infant.

 

“You’re Lucian.” Ardyn’s voice, like his expression, is flat and empty.

The assistant cradles the baby in his arms -- cradles _Carus_ \-- as he backs away from Ardyn. Magitek troopers and humans alike are looking for him, for the missing clone infant; as far as this man knows, Ardyn is as well.

“You’re monsters,” the assistant snarls back. He jumps into a tangent about how inhumane Niflheim is, experimenting on their own children; Ardyn doesn’t have the energy or patience to explain that the clones never had rights in the first place, that they never had a consciousness beyond the tubes to begin with. They weren’t born to be citizens of Niflheim -- to be people. They were created to serve, to fight, to die.

He saves his breath. The assistant is still going, reaching for a gun (now, where had he hidden that?) as Ardyn stalks over to the nearby door. His power ripples through his limbs, seeping out into the open world as Ardyn’s fingers dance over the lock of the small door.

“Luckily for you,” Ardyn sings, voice still hollow, “I am not so detestable that I would harm a child.”

Time comes to a halt outside the facility. The assistant, dazed and confused, hesitates to leave. He’s lowering his gun, holding the baby closer to his chest. Surely this can’t be that difficult for him to process?

“What…?”

Ardyn makes his one and only demand to get the message through. “If I find out this baby was not given a happy life, I _will_ come for you, Lucian. And I will not be as merciful.”

The assistant wastes no time sprinting out of the facility. He doesn’t stop to marvel at how the world around him remains in stasis, at how he has been given a teasing taste of the eternity Ardyn knows like the backs of his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe i forgot to put this here but eh. find me on tumblr at nerfherder-han (main) or miks-archive, or on twitter @nerfherder_han. who knows, maybe i'll post updates of progress or scream about stuff!


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